A social network service is an online service, platform or site that focuses on building and reflecting of social networks or social relations among people (e.g., those who share interests and/or activities). A social network service essentially consists of a representation of each user (often a profile), his/her social links, and a variety of additional services. Most social network services are web-based and provide means for users to interact over the Internet, such as by e-mail and instant messaging. Social networking sites allow users to share ideas, activities, events, and interests within their individual networks.
Social networking sites (e.g., Facebook®) present to a particular user the posts and stories by other users in a social networking feed (referred to as a “news feed”). New postings or updates from friends and pages followed by the user (including photo tags, event updates, group memberships and other activity) will be reflected in the news feed. At times, some of the posts or updates in the thread of posts (i.e., the stream of posts in the social networking feed) include messages with multiple topics embedded within them which can lead to confusion for the user. Further confusion can result when other users start responding to one of the topics from the original post. As a result, it becomes difficult for the readers to understand which comments match which topic from the original post. The reader has to read back and forth between the comments and the original post to match them up. Such a process is inefficient in attempting to understand the flow of the conversation regarding a topic.
Additionally, there may be participants who post a comment with no desire to be further engaged in the conversation; whereas, there may be other participants who desire to continue the ongoing discussion. Unfortunately, the thread of posts (i.e., the stream of posts in the social networking feed) includes posts from users who desire to continue the ongoing discussion as well as the users who have no desire to be further engaged in the conversation. As a result, some of the participants or followers of the thread may be exposed to posts of a thread they have no interest in viewing.
Hence, the social network users' interactions can be confusing and frustrating at times due to the multiple topics involved in the posts as well as the inclusion of participants or followers of a thread that may be exposed to posts of a thread they have no interest in viewing.